The Room at the Very End of the Hall
by eliska
Summary: He occupies a space even he cannot find words to describe, and finds himself more sullen each passing July. Maybe it was a good thing Arthur decided to show up this year, after all. Hong Kong- and 7/1-centric.


"Sometimes I wonder if I raised you too ornery, like myself."

They are standing at an intersection, bustling cars and people flowing like water. The older man looks up, licks his lips, and sighs. It is loud, but that had become, increasingly, just background noise.

"You aren't complaining about the heat this time." The other man ignores the statement.

"Nothing to complain about." He is wearing clothes still utterly unsuited for the weather, a slightly discoloured green polo and uncomfortable-looking slacks. It isn't even like he is here on business, the younger man thought. "It's hot everywhere this year."

"Yeah, yeah." A noncommittal sort of noise escapes his lips. "Like, where _are _you going, anyway. We've been standing here for a bit. People are staring."

The other man sighed, in a way that suggested this happened often. "Leon, you know, sometimes it's a nice thing to just _look_-"

Not waiting for the end of it, Leon steps off the sidewalk and heads forward, ignoring the screeching of cars. The older man stares after him, slightly nonplussed, but doesn't hesitate to follow. "Where are you going?"

"Where you want to go."

"And where is that?" His question was met with a blank stare. "What? It's quite a valid question if you ask me-"

"Do you really think I wouldn't know."

* * *

In several minutes they reach the harbour. At this time of day there is nothing much going on, men asleep under awnings on the side of the road, a tangle of children running down the muddied paths. A seagull screeched atop the nearest building, a place less traveled by tourists nowadays. Most ships don't come here anymore. But it's here where it all started, some say.

The sea is a grey-green expanse; he tastes salt in his mouth. Quietly the older man strode on ahead, watching dinghies bob peacefully beyond him. He draws some curious eyes, although they don't look at him for long; foreigners aren't really a new thing anymore, haven't been for decades.

"Nothing's really changed, has it?"

"Unless you don't count the buildings up ahead and the new high-rises across from here, no, it hasn't."

"That wasn't what I was trying to say."

"Sorry."

Silence overtakes them once more as they stare out across the narrow waters. There isn't much to see, but he comes here every time he visits. Wind, rain, blazing sun - his visits are far less frequent nowadays, but the old man just doesn't let up. Sometimes he walks up to one of the locals and asks if he could sit on their boat, just for a while. Today isn't one of those days.

Sometimes, like today, he would just stand there and _look_. Take in the smell of fish and faint petroleum and rust, a world apart from where they'd been on the busy intersection just minutes before. And he would leave it all in a sigh. Leon isn't so sure he wants to know its meaning; beneath that feeling is one that knows why.

So he checks his watch, because he doesn't know how else to act.

"...Hey, Arthur."

"Hm?"

"It's nearly three."

Wordlessly the older man turns around, wearing a sort of half-smile as he looks at the other. "Well, lead me on then."

* * *

He watches the server bring their orders, and the smell of Earl Grey is unmistakable. A quiet murmur fills the background; that he blocks out, and reaches to lift the teapot. Across from him Leon sits, playing with his straw.

"This is a nice place."

Arthur doesn't quite know which mall they are in (his reading skills are still as awful as before, as Leon had so kindly told him once they'd sat down – he had seen no English lettering this time). Still, the cafe chairs are comfortable enough, and there is air conditioning. He'd even let Leon order for him, this time.

Tendrils of white rise up and disappear. Arthur sips on his tea, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"If you're waiting on me, you should've known I never like to start."

"Perhaps that is true," the older man nods. "I suppose I shouldn't wait then. You're probably wondering why I came today."

_Of all days_. A redundant, unused phrase. If I were younger, Leon thought, I'd have dumped a frog in his cup or stuck my tongue out at him. But such days had been over for a surprisingly long time.

"It's your birthday tomorrow."

"I don't have a birthday." Instinctively, that is the first thing that rolls off his tongue. It's not quite true, but not quite false either. Neither of them remember when he was born, and in the light of things it shouldn't matter so much anyway. But symbolism persists where nothing else can substitute.

Arthur shrugs. "We could put it another way, then."

"Like, the day you lost custody of me and sent me back to my brother? Would that work better for this conversation?"

There it goes again. He doesn't _want _to antagonize Arthur; or maybe he _wants _to, but not - not in that way. Words come slowly to him in this moment, and he feels: _maybe I've lost myself in it all. An affliction that takes me away from everyone I've ever looked up to. But it's their fault too, _theirs_, not just mine._

When he looks up again Arthur is looking at his tea. Arthur doesn't _look _old, he thinks, not objectively; but Leon can see the lines, those visible and invisible, drawn above thick brows and under his eyes. There is no mistaking the age in _those _eyes, green and quite unperturbed even now. To him this has happened before, maybe too many times to count. Just thinking about that makes Leon uncomfortable, even a little angry - but such was the way of their world. His eyes betray nothing as he opens his mouth once more, emptying a flood of words that he is sure would never be spoken again, not for quite some time.

"I was always the little brother. My brother gave me to you when he stopped caring about me, and it was opportune to do so. Maybe I shouldn't put it that way, but that's how I've felt, for all these years. Whatever. Now he is happy to have me back, because I put money in his pockets and land to his name. Do you expect me to feel happy about that, really."

Of course he doesn't. Arthur wipes away something on his cheek with a napkin, maybe a spot of jam. It is a surprise, sort of, Leon's confession; the sort of thing he would say inside an apartment and not a cafe. That had been Arthur's fault, maybe. "No, I don't. But you must know what kind of man your brother is. A promise is a promise, to him and to me."

"That's nothing new." Better than anyone, he did know what his brother was like. Although that, like so many other things, could not be helped. The world had been an awful place for men like him, who needed to assert themselves before men like Arthur, or disappear into the frenetic mess, never to be seen again. Now things are different, but different does not mean better. He drains his glass of iced coffee while wishing it was whiskey. _Sometimes I wish you hadn't gone, but that wouldn't have been possible, would it?_

"I don't suppose it was a completely horrible idea at first, although to be fair, it was for my sake, then." At this their eyes lock, although Arthur is looking at something far beyond where Leon sits, miles away home. "I thought I had the world once, you know. Some say I did."

"And then you grew tired of it all, and gave your riches away out of the generosity of your heart?"

"_And then _the world changed, where old men like us are increasingly losing our reins to the youth." Leon rolls his eyes, and Arthur smiles, just a bit. "Perhaps not all that willingly, but there you are."

"You're not like, gonna tell me this is some new sort of _freedom_, are you."

That word. A dangerous word to bring up, he knew, but it was still a choice. _Still_. Arthur looks at him wryly, and turns his cup around. "I call it whatever you call it: a system, imperfect as it is, better than nothing, yet leaving more to be wanted."

"You make it sound nice, almost." And it _is _nice, for the time being, sitting inside this cafe and enjoying the cool air and looking over the city. His heart beating to the rhythm of the cars inching along the roads below and the subway rattling steel paths and the _people_, the peoples' footsteps along the pavement echoing inside a concrete cage. Leon could have been any one of them. And yet here he is. "S'pose I should be grateful I'm not living like everyone over at his house."

"If that makes you feel better."

"Condescension always makes me feel better, okay."

"So I see I _have _raised you like me." That earns Arthur a smirk. The tea is all gone now, and so are the biscuits. "If nothing, I hope you're satisfied with that."

"It's fun to mess up Teach with that, yeah." His grip on the chair loosened, Leon sits back, watching the plates get taken away. Arthur had always been sneaky like that, making him involuntarily publicize his emotions whenever this sort of thing happened. "He's catching on though, I guess. Gotta be sly about it now."

"You still love him." It was a statement, gentle yet firm. Arthur could see him flinch from where he sits, but by this point Leon could do little to care. What the older man says is not untrue, although half the time he wishes it were. His hand trembles ever so slightly, which he tries to avoid by tapping on the table. Naturally this doesn't work. "I thought you'd lost that habit by now."

"Won't if it annoys you." A certain air of haughtiness accompanies his words; he smiles briefly at Arthur with blank eyes, a man of incongruity through and through.

"That certainly puts things in perspective."

"Perspective, as in it's four and I gotta run."

"Always on the rush, aren't you." After all, this is a city that never stops. Leon doesn't answer, only stands up and walks to the door. The conversation is over, for now.

* * *

The air is sticky as he walks out of the bank, half past six and none too soon. Arthur is waiting for him on the curb, and he hails a taxi.

It takes them some time to actually _get _to the restaurant, a crowded twenty-seat establishment hidden in one of the many winding alleys that makes up the outer edges of downtown. Seats are swiftly taken care of after a quiet word with the owner, a harried-looking woman in her mid-forties. She ushers them to the back, wipes clean the seats and table. There is no menu offered to them, but Arthur isn't surprised by this anymore.

Instead he dubiously pokes at the first dish that comes their way, a mysterious meat soaked in sweet sauce. Leon can see the older man run through various dishes in his head, then finally give up and dig in. He himself doesn't know, really, what it is - every time Arthur comes he takes him to a different place, an ever-changing repertoire. Every time he wants to go back to a previous place he finds himself lost, not completely unwillingly; his memory becomes poorer by the year amid a rapidly diminishing past.

The stream of customers is constant, and soon they are back out on the streets again. Past black-doored pachinko places and even narrower alleys leading to nowhere, and suddenly they are met with lights: the road opens up.

"Which hotel are you staying at again?"

"Didn't book one this time." Leon turned to look at him, face veiled by the lights. "Thought I'd just, well, find one when I get exhausted."

"You could stay over. That's what you're angling for anyway, isn't it."

"If you say so," Arthur began, and then stopped, a curious expression beginning to form on his lips. "I do believe that's the first time you've said anything like that to me. Is something the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter." Typical, dodging the question again. Even if he could answer, it would've been the same - a multitude of distresses that built up over time year after year, his brother's words coming back to haunt him: _you belong to me now_. Letting Arthur sleep over was the least of his worries. "Let's go."

* * *

The first thing Arthur notices are the bird cages. All of them open, empty, strewn about the house in a delightfully messy manner. His eyes linger while Leon opens the lights in the guest bedroom. "Bit small, but you'll have to deal."

"Still larger than a hotel room."

When was the last time they slept under the same roof again? Leon remembers the grand house he used to sleep in, his room at the very end of the long hallway in the back. All sorts of important people would enter and leave the front door like a whirlwind, and he would watch them, fascinated, and frightened, and wondering how long until he could go home. Their faces flash across his mind in seconds; he shakes his head, brushes off something invisible on the covers.

"I'm showering first. There isn't space for a television but you can deal, I guess. WiFi password's the same."

He watches Arthur carefully for about three seconds; upon deciding that the older man had taken up an interest in a stack of old newspapers he kept for Sudoku purposes, Leon walks into the bathroom and turns on the water.

The headlines whirr through his head. Arthur reads of things he remembers and doesn't, daily occurrences and trifles, protests and festivals, living and dying; and deeper down, buried all the way underneath, a yearning for reprieve.

He's long trained himself to read, really _read_, but now he isn't sure if that's what he wants to see.

"I'm too old for this," he says, a touch huffily, to nobody in particular.

"Yeah, you are." Startled, Arthur looks up from the paper and sees his son standing there, towel draped around his shoulders. "And like, don't slip in there with your cranky old self, okay. I don't want to pay your hospital bill too."

"Well I might just do that, then."

Leon watches him go inside, the door closing with a little click. He walks over to where Arthur had sat and glances at the newspaper: _Projected thousands march the streets_.

That he lays aside. He can feel the tension building inside, little by little; though it wasn't _necessary_, all things considered. Tomorrow would pass like any other day. And the day after that would bring nothing new.

"_It's good to have you home_," he remembers his brother saying on that day so long ago. Him giving Leon a pat on the back and a smile that seemed at once too sad and too haughty. That was the way of this world now. Lies and smiles. Perhaps it had always been, and he had been too proud to see.

Arthur took long showers. During the remaining time Leon fished out thinner covers and a fluffier pillow for the bed. He wonders briefly whether Arthur remembers he had brought absolutely no clothes - which was actually strange, now that Leon really thought about it, like he had been planning this all along.

_Oh._

The shower door opens a crack. "I forgot to ask about pyjamas-"

"Mei left a sleeping gown in here somewhere, gimme a moment."

"I can assure you I am _not _drunk for that." The door closes, and Leon could hear splashes of water aggressively hitting the walls this time. He hoped it would not leak.

When Arthur finally opens the door again he finds some unrecognizable articles lying on a chair near the crack. He comes out moments later, grumbling, in clothes a size or two too large.

"At least they're comfortable, okay." Leon eyes him critically. "You look like ass in that, though."

"Thank you." The older man sits down next to him, and picks up the paper once more. It is about this moment that Leon wishes he actually had a television, just to avoid whatever would be coming next. Too bad there were so many useless things piled up in the house for there to be space. He thinks about giving away a couple of the bird cages, but that thought makes something clinch inside. Arthur reads a couple of lines, grunts, and looks over. "Is something the matter?"

"No."

"Thought you a better liar than that." Leon looks at his feet. "Have you gotten _worse_, possibly?"

"Not if Teach still swallows it all up."

"Do you think he wouldn't know?" Arthur says, and the room is still. Leon thinks, blankly: _if this were in Arthur's house, I'd be hearing crickets_. "No matter how much his boss nods and smiles at them. He knows what you think and he _agrees _with what you think, you must know-"

"How would you know that." Now he is being unreasonable, he knows, but - what of it? Who was there to say he didn't have a right to? The tight feeling in his chest burns. "He's not like you. Even then, you didn't. Did you."

"Leon-"

"_Did _you, Arthur, you who are so _enlightened_ in the art of taking things from people and leaving them to fend for themselves when crisis arose-"

Something slammed, with finality, on the table. Arthur's fist. The newspaper crumpled to the ground.

"Do _not _start about that bloody affair again." He turns, voice kept low, and sees a fleeting flash of fire in the other's eyes.

(Arthur knows that look. They had argued on a boat once, many years ago, which escalated into something more. Leon had jumped into the dirty bay-water and swam off rather than continue. It was from the docks that Arthur chased him to the looming towers of Kowloon where he stopped, panting. That had been the one place he would not enter, a maze of narrow alleys and wires and shadows. A playground for an angry child. He had looked up and seen the boy with flames for eyes watching him from inside a window, and he felt cold.)

But when he looks again Leon is only staring, detached, at the fissures in the glass. He would have to replace them tomorrow, Arthur thinks. Suddenly he feels his age again: older than old, and he wants to lie down and forget.

Finally, he opens his mouth. "I-"

"Forget it."

"You can't forget everything," Arthur responds, almost instinctively. He continues, unaware. "I'm cranky and old. So damned old I've seen empires rise and fall before you were born. People, countries, corporations, they're all the same. I don't think I can forget the things I've done to people to get where I am now. Neither can you."

Words jam in Leon's throat: _how would you know, how can you tell me what to think, how can you talk like _him _in this way, how, why_. Then he realizes what Arthur is saying.

"No." _I can't_.

He remembers a warm hand guiding him as he walked into the palace and playing tag with his sister in the moonlit gardens and remembering how thankful he was to live in the best place in the world and under the most powerful man who lived, or so he thought.

He remembers being ripped away from the only family he's known and dumped into a place too bright, _the room at the very end of the hall_, his hair cut away and his body stuffed into unfamiliar clothes and his tongue rolling alien sounds. Right as he learned to tolerate it the war had come and torn it apart and he had hated with every fiber of his being because he had to learn it this way: that there were no powerful men, only powerful lies and endless deceit.

He remembers watching his sister shatter and his brother grow hard and cold, all the while the chain on himself loosening and loosening until his heart overflowed and Arthur gravely telling him in the night that he was to go home soon, and something had trembled and broke inside.

"I used to look up to you," he hears himself saying. "For a while at least. After you took me from Teach, there wasn't...really anything I could do. All those important people came to you, because they were scared and wanted to kiss ass. My brother didn't have a choice. You had that power then. You were the world.

"But _that _was a long time ago now, wasn't it? I think you would know."

He looks into those green eyes and smiles.

* * *

Arthur watches his retreating back disappear behind the bedroom door. Maybe he's become soft in his age now, he thinks, reclining back into the sofa; he can't even think of a good retort. Come morning and it would be different.

The anger's gone out of him, long gone. Gone with what he had left to the people after him. Clinging traditions, that is all. The world _is_ different now, and he knows it.

"Shit," he says, closing his eyes. "I'd raised him right after all."

* * *

Small as it is, this is the only room in the flat with a window.

Leon stands in his room and looks. It's not a great view: a tangled mess of ongoing construction, thankfully quiet during the night. But it's _his_ ugly view. Not anyone else's.

His phone starts to vibrate with early messages; it drops to the floor unheeded. Outside his door he can hear Arthur shuffling into his own room. Time for bed, he thinks. But Leon had always been a terrible night owl. Tonight is no different.

He turns off the light inside and it all seeps outside, twinkling dots of skyscrapers and ferries and cars and people. For a fleeting moment there are no more grand houses, no brother standing careful watch over him, no whispers of _be strong _in his ear. In that moment Leon hears a voice in a language that is his.

_I remember me._

When the clock strikes twelve, he can already hear the fireworks. The fireworks inside his heart.

* * *

**End.**

* * *

**A/N:** I wish I had thought of this before 7/1 came and went. Inspired partly by a tumblr roleplay that was much more concise and straightforward about it.


End file.
